Overload Pt.2

Part two of my massive post, no real need to read in order but hey, do as you feel.

MONDAY:
The majority of Monday morning was spent in recovery mode. I cleaned up a bit from the night before, nuked some left over pizza and after a little while I fired up the PC to get into the free-roll I thought I had on this morning. After missing that, I remembered that I still had about 3 dollars worth of points at Poker Pages, and their big tournaments are on Monday morning’s Sydney time. I log in (and after playing with the cables and speakers for about 30 minutes to get everything working, thanks goes to the distraction) and find out I have missed the big tournament by about an hour. I do sign up for two others though as I have always liked their tournament structures (or more correctly, their $10,000 starting stacks).

Poker Pages and Bugsy Club (the real money side of Poker Pages) are very special for me. My first hands of online poker were there, as well as my first win, but I have never pulled out any cash because with their free-rolls, you get paid in Bugsy Bonus Points – like frequent players points on any other site. Get 1000 points, you can cash it in for $10. The highest I have ever been in 700, and now I was down to 300 or so. I entered a 1o point tournament with 200 others, and a 100 point one with 65 others.

The 10 point tournament was interesting. I doubled up and then hovered for the next 2 hours. I never got above 25K, but kept winning enough to keep me above 20K. I was more interested in the other tournament though and I didn’t notice that the blinds were getting very big for my small stack. The top 27 get paid, and I had 2BB left when I went all-in with a suited King UTG. I got called and lost to whatever, and finished in 31st.

In the other tournament, I was doing about the same. We had one maniac at our table who was annoying every one. “She” (the username had “gurl” in it, but who knows really?) would even talk about her hand while play was still going, and just generally being idiotic, which was even worse seeing as she had 50K in chips to everyone else’s 10-20K. She pushed all-in three hands in a row, and when she did the third time I had AA. Of course I had to call, and she flipped over Ax suited. AA didn’t hit, but neither did her suit so I doubled up.

In the nest 40 minutes, I got AA 3 more times, and they held up each time without hitting. Even tripled up on them once with two more all-in calls in front of me. I made my way into the final table with a very healthy tight image, and a less than healthy stack. I was folding everything that wasn’t the nuts now.

I managed to fold my way into the final five, and was stealing blinds/ante’s at least once in an orbit. Any bet I made got respect, which was good to see. I was the short stack for a little while, but got some good cards to keep me afloat. We get down to 3, and I am 70K vs 300K and 250K. I win some all-ins, we go back and forth for ages, and I even enjoy a little period as the chip leader. I have to admit when I knocked out third I got a little lucky. I called the all-in with AT and he showed AK. A ten hit the board, and he was not happy.

The third tournament break was scheduled in five minutes, which would have been annoying since we were already heads up. We went back and forth and then with less than 1 minute until the break, I see a flop with Ahxo. Flop comes three hearts and I figure what the hell, all-in. He has me just covered. He calls and shows Khx. Alright, looks like he is sick of this too. He has just three outs here.

Turn = King. Ok, not too bad. I have 3 aces to hit, or 8 hearts that will give me the win.

River = King.

What can you do?

So I pulled in 1300 points for my nearly-three-hour stint here, and I felt very satisfied. I can finally play in the real money tournaments here and see how I go.

The weekend was long, and filled with many hands that I can not remember. I do know though that I continue to play bad poker, and it makes me feel good.